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Bertrand Russell Research Paper

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Bertrand Russell influenced 20th Century intellectual’s beliefs in Realism to a Modernistic approach through his pacifist attitude towards war, his obsession with “The Communist Experiment”, and his progressive views of Women’s Suffrage. The realistic movement served as a reaction against romanticism and promoted more uses of the scientific method. Using the principles of the scientific method, philosophers hoped to control actions in an attempt to locate the ideal. During this time many thought that the scientific method was an attack on religion and thus this did not have much popularity. This did not allow these ideas to spread easily thus taking a long time for these ideas to become relevant. Literature served as a prominent source of gathering …show more content…

Russell began to develop a pacifist attitude. Pacifism is a movement against war, violence, or militarism. During the war Russell stated “When the war came I felt as if I heard the voice of God. I knew that it was my business to protest, however futile protest might be. My whole nature was involved.” (F-8) He used this as a sort of calling to bring forth his beliefs and gain followers to resist the war. He suggested that the Great Powers of Europe were blind by their government and Russell said “he was quite unable to accept the superficial melodramatic explanations of the catastrophe which were promulgated by all the belligerent governments.”(F-6) Russell was a major peace activist who added on to the era of modernism. After the war he was disliked by the church because he stated that “if God exists, it was surely impossible that an all powerful, all knowing, being would be so vain as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.” (M-3) In this statement Russell questioned the will of God and this made it very hard for him to attract followers outside of his own group. Russell had a meaningful cause but he did not have enough followers to make an impact as the church had done for so many years. Although Russell was completely against warfare and violence he knew that war among humans was inevitable as he concluded that “fighting and killing are among the natural

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